Development of the pulsed power system for the phelix Kilo/Joule/Petawatt-laser at GSI darmstadt

The high power laser PHELIX is currently installed at the heavy ion accelerator facility GSI-Darmstadt. It will deliver several kJ in pulses of 1 to 10 ns length with variable pulse shaping, and up to one petawatt power in 500 fs pulses using chirped pulse amplification. The pulsed power system setup for the glass amplifiers and Faraday rotators is described. The capacitor bank for the 315 mm main amplifiers will store 3 MJ of energy and is switched with ignitrons. The discharge circuit and safety system are discussed. The structure of the control system, monitoring and data acquisition is also described and the procedures for component and full system tests are summarized